


Glitch in the System: Lost & Found

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Guest star: Pachimari, really - Freeform, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 00:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13259871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: By K.Tentacles happen.Not... not those kinds of tentacles.





	Glitch in the System: Lost & Found

Despite its reputation as the world’s foremost authority on unpredictable acts of insurrection, day-to-day life for even the most elite of Talon’s operatives was shockingly mundane given its organizational ethos. While the events which bookended individual deployments were suitably chaotic, the days between them were less so. Barring any exceptional circumstance or need for debriefing, the inner council left its constituency well enough alone, their expectation that each agent perform their due diligence regarding physical and tactical training providing structure to their days. **  
**

As such, routine was the ironic norm. In addition to establishing considerable predictability, it meant that when something was out of place, it was almost immediately apparent to everyone. What “something” was could be anything: an employee, a case report or dossier, weapons, tech. For those working and living in closer quarters, it was often the most inconsequential of everyday objects.

“What’s this?”

One such object appeared without fanfare, unheralded and unremarkable in absolutely every way but for its  location. Left anywhere else, its presence would be anything but suspect; in fact, many would welcome it with curiosity, if not excitement.

Children and adults the world over adored Pachimari, after all. Its image was practically ubiquitous, right alongside those of Rikimaru’s various mascots and even Hana Song. But what a palm-sized, stuffed version of the famous tentacled onion was doing on the kitchen table of Talon’s Venetian headquarters was as much a mystery as it was a thematic non-sequitur.

Gabriel stood before the toy, his midnight excursion for junk food interrupted by its baffling existence. Though it was fundamentally harmless, he couldn’t help but entertain the instinctual suspicion it aroused

“Strange,” he muttered, tugging idly at his goatee as he racked his brain in search of the operative who’d be so childish as to purchase the thing, nonetheless leave it in a communal space. His mental rolodex proving fruitless, he considered a different, more harrowing reason for the toy’s placement.

Picking it up in scarred hands, Reaper turned the plaything over and over, appraising it with pointed scrutiny better reserved for fresh recruits. As he ran his fingers along its surface, he searched for any signs of tampering: sewn patches inconsistent with the rest of its craftsmanship; unnecessary seams; strange scents or, worse, ticking. Toys, after all, were a common plant for both explosives and illicit substances, and Gabriel was renowned for being a man disinclined toward easily-earned trust.

His review lasted  less than two minutes. Finding nothing, he returned the plush to its original spot on the tabletop, its pristine off-white and kelly green a marked contrast to the dark oak and the looming void of night filling the estate’s corridors.

“Fucking stupid,” he growled at last, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt more tightly about his neck before turning his attention to the refrigerator.

* * *

Widowmaker found it the next morning, pausing in the kitchen doorway beside Sombra to level a critical eye on the stuffed toy. Sombra, hardly awake and far from functional, only acknowledged the sniper’s questioning glance with a yawn.

“Is this yours?” the taller woman asked, padding lightly across the room toward the item in question. When no answer came, she scooped it off the table and turned back to her colleague, head canted in silent reiteration. It certainly  _seemed_ like something the hacker would own, and of the agents stationed in Venice with on-site living quarters, Widowmaker couldn’t think of anyone else who might.

Blinking against the heavy cling of sleep, Sombra shook her head. “Nah. S’cute, though.”

“It still has a tag,” the assassin observed as her partner began to drowsily rifle through cabinets in search of the requisite ingredients for breakfast.

“He gonna’ help you make these pancakes?” Sombra asked over one shoulder.

Widowmaker sighed in a shadow of annoyance. “Still with the pancakes?” she asked. Setting the plush aside, she joined the shorter woman at the counter to assist with the procurement of certain ingredients placed further overhead: flour, baking powder, and vanilla extract.

“Jeez, spider. Why all the pancake-hate?”

Turning the bottle of extract over to check its use-by date, the sniper shrugged. “They’re just so terribly  _American_.”

Sombra chuckled at Widowmaker’s nigh-tangible derision, laughing even as she shooed her away from her workspace. She grabbed the little Pachimari en route, tracing the embroidered lines of its smiling face with her thumbs as the sniper set to washing her hands. “You gonna’ keep this thing?” she asked after a spell.

Widowmaker’s sole response was a sideways glance that declined the suggestion more loudly than words ever could, one eyebrow cocked in the most vociferous incredulity she could muster. As she reached for the hand towel hanging off the oven door railing, however, a single flicker of thought crossed her mind: an idea as asinine as it was uncomfortably amusing and, either way, bound to bear interesting fruit. “Actually.”

Sombra blinked. “Actually?”

“I have a better idea.”

The hacker inclined her chin expectantly. “Go on.”

“I am bringing it with me to see Moira.”

Sombra’s delighted peal of laughter was interrupted only briefly by the cheery, artificial squeak the stuffed onion produced when she squeezed it incidentally. Its chirp lit up the kitchen anew — a small, innocent blip on the radar of the world’s most feared terrorist organization The contrast wasn’t lost on either of them, and even Widowmaker couldn’t help the bemused chuckle that slipped past her lips.

“She’s gonna’ shit,” Sombra grinned. “You have to tell me about it.”

Nodding her agreement, Widowmaker tossed the towel across the counter to her partner and set to work. “I will deliver a full report.”

* * *

Though it didn’t alter the cold war of their rapport, Widowmaker acknowledged that Moira’s begrudging directive she return to a modified training regimen was offered with the implicit understanding the sniper’s initial weeks of recovery had been miserable. The geneticist offered no outward indication the alternating routines of intense physical therapy and endurance training were anything but standard, yet the fact their work often ran well over the scheduled handful of hours indicated something like consideration, if not a shadow of sympathy.

That said, there was nothing easy about the work given her. Despite Widowmaker’s commitment to reclaiming mastery over her own body and Moira’s willingness to facilitate it, the increments by which the doctor increased the difficulty for her patient were broad. This was the norm, and had always been the norm: Moira, pushing each agent to the extremes of their ability while they, in turn, pushed to meet that expectation out of some combination of spite and muted professional detestation.

It was Hell, but it worked. The nanotechnology that expedited healing was of remarkable benefit, reducing what would in decades past have been months of recovery to fewer than one. But the actual work - the hours of alternating sprints and distance runs, of acrobatics and weight training and aerial silks and climbing - was entirely Widowmaker’s responsibility.

“Excellent,” Moira murmured, waving the sniper down from below as she, one leg crooked around a length of silk, hung suspended from the ceiling above. With a few, deft adjustments, Widowmaker followed the scientist’s cue, tumbling with controlled grace to a few feet above the ground. “If only everyone we kept on retainer were quite so determined.”

“‘Retainer’ is not entirely honest,” the assassin sniffed.

“Regardless,” Moira continued, waving off her commentary as if it were some irritating gnat, “you are cleared for active duty. I would recommend you spend some time with your rifle, but I doubt you need my encouragement. I will apprise Akande of your progress.”

“ _Merci_ ,” Widowmaker replied, watching coolly as the taller woman terminated their conversation by stalking wordlessly toward the console against the far wall of the room. Assuming her departure as dismissal, the sniper stooped to pick up the small collection of belongings she brought: water bottle, towel, and, beneath it, the Pachimari plush she and Sombra discovered earlier that morning. Draping the towel over her shoulders, she glanced about the facility in search of a drop point. The whole thing was excessively silly, but placement was absolutely crucial.

“Amélie. One more thing,” Moira rejoined, turning on her heel suddenly. “The recoil on your rif— what the bloody hell is that?”

Glancing between the toy in her hand and the doctor before her, Widowmaker froze for precisely one second, and, thinking as quickly as possible, hung her head in mock mourning of a surprise well-thwarted. “A thank you,” she said, perfectly straight-faced as she approached the other woman. “I am an abysmal patient.”

Without so much as another word, she leveraged Moira’s flabbergasted silence as an opportunity to deposit the wayward toy in her free hand, turn on her heel, and move with mechanical precision toward the exit. As the doors whispered open, she heard Moira’s voice, weighted with uncertainty, behind her:

“…the recoil on your rifle may aggravate your shoulder…”

Then:

“These _idiots_.”

* * *

True to Moira’s prediction, Widowmaker spent the rest of the day outside, reacquainting herself with the Widow’s Kiss while Sombra logged hit/miss percentiles at the sniper’s request. Doubly true was the doctor’s warning that the rifle’s recoil, normally so innocuous - comforting, even - grew irritating with time as the butt stock hit the still-tender shoulder that only a few weeks ago had been firmly dislocated.  

“Damn,” the she hissed, pressing ungloved fingertips against the nexus of joint and socket as she switched the gun to her off-hand.

Waving her holoscreen out of existence, Sombra sidled up beside the other woman, looping an arm about her waist. “Call it a day. There’ll be more angry holographic men for you to murder tomorrow.”

“Probably for the best,” Widowmaker admitted, allowing the hacker to lead her up the graduating stairs toward one of the estate’s many entrances. Warmth greeted them beyond the threshold, immediately easing the hacker’s shaky grip as they traversed the network of halls toward the westernmost wing serving as their living quarters.

“You give Moira that thing?” Sombra asked, glancing up to meet the taller woman’s eye from the corner of her own.

“I did,” she replied. “It was sufficiently uncomfortable.”

“For you?”

“For everyone,” Widowmaker said, trying and failing to suppress the smile threatening the corner of her mouth. As Sombra’s chuckle began to give way to some further inquiry, they turned the corner toward the hacker’s room and ran, almost bodily, into Gabriel. The man’s expression was unreadable - somehow removed from his usual, passive scrutiny and irritation. On anyone else, it may have read as muted delight; on him, it seemed like discomfort. Widowmaker recognized it well and immediately as his default expression of  lukewarm amusement.

“What?” she asked suspiciously, eyes narrowed.

Shrugging broad shoulders, Reaper merely cast a long glance over his shoulder, as if expecting some shadow other than his own to follow. “Nothing.”

“You are making that face.”

“What face?”

“The face you make when something is funny.”

Sombra glanced between the two of them, brows raised. “ _Jefe_?”

Shaking his head, Gabriel only shouldered past them with a grunt.

“Everyone here is fucking  _weird_ ,” Sombra murmured at the exact second Akande turned the far corner, hands curled around a small, white and green object.

“How convenient,” he said, stopping before them. “Just who I needed to see.”

The silence that attempted residency between the three of them never had a chance against Sombra’s gleeful cackle. Akande, stifling his own smirk, averted his gaze to the object in his hands.

“Lacroix,” he began, voice broken by the faint lilt of laughter trying to break through. “Is this yours?” He unfolded his hands with the question, revealing the smiling face of the mysterious Pachimari.

“No,” Widowmaker replied tonelessly. “It is Moira’s.”

Snickering, Doomfist shook his head. “Moira, it seems, finds its presence particularly distracting” he said. “Which, frankly, I think is her way of saying she liked it but doesn’t have a place for it.”

“Like everything she likes,” Sombra murmured beneath her breath - a statement both Akande and Widowmaker seemed perfectly capable of acknowledging without actually acknowledging it via an exchange of glances.

“I think it’s prudent I return this to you for the time being,” he continued, proffering the stuffed creature with a degree of delicacy that seemed infinitely at odds with the strength he both possessed and embodied “In the future, I recommend scotch if you’re in need of a gift for Doctor O’Deorain.”

Before Widowmaker could even think of accepting the toy, Sombra scooped it deftly into her arms. “Gosh,  _araña_. How thoughtful,” she grinned. “Just what I always wanted.”

Shaking his head, Akande simply stepped aside and allowed them to continue on their way. “Thoughtful, isn’t she?” he smirked.

“Shut up.” Widowmaker replied, waving him a lazy goodbye.


End file.
